Afloat in Misinformation

As a former teacher of undergraduate and graduate students, I appreciate Melanie Trecek-King’s excellent articles in Skeptical inquirer (“Teach Skills, Not Facts,” January/February 2022, and “A Life Preserver for Staying Afloat in a Sea of Misinformation,” March/April 2022).

They are the result of much thought, effort, and devotion. Her students are very fortunate to have her courses, and I wish her continuing success in her crusade to enlighten students.

Another area of deficient education is philosophy. Students should take at least a basic course introducing philosophy. All science graduate degree students should be required to answer the following question on their final examination: “How does science relate to the basic areas of philosophical inquiry (aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, logic, and metaphysics)?”

Ray C. Telfair II, PhD
Certified Wildlife Biologist
Whitehouse, Texas

I wholeheartedly agree with Prof. Melanie Trecek-King that we need to more effectively and consistently teach accurate thinking skills.

It’s underappreciated, but I think vital, to teach accurate thinking skills persuasively rather than from authority. Many students won’t accept and internalize the strictures of accurate thinking unless they understand why its rules are necessary. There’s significant resistance to accurate thinking because it calls various wish-fulfilling beliefs into question. The evidence and justification supporting accurate thinking needs to be presented, or students may dismiss it as just another arbitrary system of faith.

For example, don’t just declare that unfalsifiable claims aren’t allowed. Explain that they can’t be evidence-based because they can fit any evidence, so the fact that they fit the existing evidence is not meaningful. Describe the various experiments showing how malleable human memory is. Do classroom demonstrations of unconscious bias and the placebo effect. Play the telephone game. Have a professional psychic demonstrate cold reading and record what is said. Later, show how students’ recollections of the psychic are inaccurate.
R. Allen Gilliam
Longwood, Florida

In Melanie Trecek-King’s otherwise excellent article, there is some irony in the mention of deductive arguments because most of the standards she proposes are irrelevant for the formal sciences, such as mathematics, computer science, and logic itself. Falsifiability, Alternative Explanations, and Tentative Conclusions don’t apply and Objectivity, Evidence, and Replicability have somewhat different meanings and are much easier to ensure. To address this, a one-sentence disclaimer would probably have sufficed.

Of course, most of these come back into play in looking at applied mathematics, statistics, and computing. Experiment design, modeling, and interpretation are each subject to the FLOATER tests. FLOATER also clearly applies to claims for software applications and their properties and to claims of efficacy in the process of modeling and development.

Thomas J. Marlowe
Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Computer Science
Seton Hall University
South Orange, New Jersey

A good piece of writing should inspire thinking. Melanie Trecek-King’s “Staying Afloat in a Sea of Misinformation” (March/April 2022) certainly did that.

She might consider AFLOATER, the first A being Audience. That is a mighty factor in presenting a claim or anti-claim if it is to be accepted. Scientists such as Galileo and Charles Darwin were rebuffed by then-current beliefs. The idea of insects as vectors of malaria, bubonic plague, and other maladies would have been derided before its time had come. Audience awareness is a definite tool in the box.

Her statement “But it’s also true that science is a human endeavor, and humans are imperfect” is so relevant. It’s well-known and frequently acknowledged, but it certainly bears repeating and could have headed the article.

Joan MacNeill
Portland, Oregon

See Daniel Kahnemann’s Thinking, Fast and Slow for a model of thinking that explains how conscious rationality fails when a person is too busy, stressed, fearful, or tired. My look at some implications of this (at http://www.ccrsdodona.org/markmuse/philosophy/ratarg.html) runs to several pages, and it is still incomplete. The essential problem is that many people, much of the time, don’t have the mental energy to even notice that they need to use FLOATER (described in Melanie Trecek-King’s article) or any other tool of critical thinking, much less actually do the critical thinking.

The missing first step is Awaken Conscious Mind. Can SI ask any columnists or other writers to address this issue in the depth the topic really needs?

The situation in the United States is unlikely to improve as long as laws shield websites and broadcasters from liability for permitting (and profiting from) lies and decades of court rulings treat corporations as having the rights of people and treat money as speech.

Mark Pottenger
San Diego, California

Ghost Clothes

As a new subscriber to SI, I have enjoyed each issue thoroughly. I found the articles on ghost photos in the March/April 2022 issue perplexing, however (“Snapshot ‘Miracles’: Can Photographic Anomalies Be Evidence of the Supernatural?”). Each gave highly more plausible explanations for the images than the supernatural suppositions of their wanna-believers. But none of these articles asked about the one detail that has bothered and perplexed me over my forty years of being a skeptic: In these photos (or people’s anecdotes, or movies, or TV shows), why aren’t the “ghosts” naked? Did their clothes die too?

Never mind wondering about an afterlife. I wonder if there’s a Phantom Fashions store in the hereafter to buy some ethereal duds for nonchalant haunting. I’m pretty sure most skeptics are materialists, so why do we not ask where these incorporeal beings get the “material” for their clothes?

Each article either shows or mentions the clothing of their discrete apparitions. Just sayin’. (And are we saying the only “realistic” depiction of a ghost is “Slimer” from Ghostbusters?)

Jim Feltner
Michigan City, Indiana

Kenny Biddle replies:

I must confess that the thought of walking down a dark hallway and suddenly being confronted by a transparent being in its birthday suit has me both giggling and feeling awkward. The idea of clothing returning from the great beyond has always baffled me. The classic “white dress” seems to be the fashionable choice for ladies, while all black is popular with gentlemen.

I’ve brought up this question to a variety of ghost hunters, psychics, and mediums over the years. The answers I receive don’t seem to vary much at all, with most claiming that ghosts have a magical ability to manifest clothing at will (in addition to walking through walls, floating, disappearing at will, etc.). According to such beliefs, ghosts create clothing from 100 percent “energy” rather than cotton. And there you have it: eternal life brings eternal fashion.

In reality, the reason ghosts have clothing is because they’re not ghosts; they’re living people caught by mistake. But I think you knew that.

 

Joe Nickell replies:

Just read my book The Science of Ghosts, chapter 2 of which is titled “Naked Ghosts!”

 

 

Carl Sagan

I would like to add the following to Robyn E. Blumner’s column, “Remembering Carl Sagan,” March/April 2022. After rereading The Demon-Haunted World, I find the following statement really perspicacious:

I worry that … pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us—then habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. It’s little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

This reflects Sagan’s Maxim: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and claims without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Dave Hancock
Chesterland, Ohio

Talking to Science Deniers

“How to Talk to Science Deniers” by Massimo Pigliucci (March/April 2022) drew my attention for two reasons: The advice is good, in my view, but also incomplete. My background for the past four decades includes interventions with so-called cult members as a so-called deprogrammer. Rarely a day goes by that I am not communicating with someone about a cult problem or engaging in some other project related to problematic closed systems of belief and behavior. I agree with Professor Pigliucci that “there is a pernicious belief” among skeptics “that it’s a waste of time talking to science deniers.” If I’ve heard this a few times, I’ve heard it a few thousand times when someone approaches me for help.

Intervention can be brief, as the article mentions, or it can go on for days with discussion lasting ten or more hours a day. Of the latter type of intervention with consenting adults, I estimate that 60 percent of my nearly 500 cases succeeded in that the group member chose to leave the cult for good during the intervention. Why would an intervention succeed? To quote the article, “What is needed is a wedge that makes [science] deniers uncertain about … their beliefs.” Wedges only work with leverage, and they can only be applied well when invited. A key to intervention is rapport (any seasoned salesman knows this); another is applying leverage.

Rapport is being authentically nice, patient, “listening” as the article suggests, and convincing the client or denier that you are worth listening to; you know what they believe and can recite it perhaps more thoroughly than they can. For example, at the start of one intervention with a young man dedicated for years to a controversial Hindu-based cult, he and I spent the first four hours explaining his beliefs to his incredulous family, then we began the slow process of expanding the Hindu tradition beyond the bounds of his cult system. In other words, I was on his side to start the intervention. He later told me he initially suspected that I was a Hindu!

Leverage, to me, is anything that helps you drive the wedge further and that can mean simply sustaining friendship—and rapport.

One final point is the common canard that losing a belief system will leave a damaging hole in the believer’s social and psychological structure. The old challenge goes like this: Well, if you take that away from them, what are you going to replace it with? First, I was never able to “take” a cult devotion away from anyone; rather, they willingly gave it up because holding onto it proved useless if not damaging. Second, there is nothing to replace it, but tools for research and social self-strengthening are shared. Think of it as healing, not loss. No one loses a bad haircut, an ill-fitting wardrobe, a cold, or cancer. They reorganize, represent, or heal to what is a healthy state for them. Applied skepticism, if nothing else, can help us to remain in a healthier frame of mind.

Joe Szimhart
Stowe, Pennsylvania

Massimo Pigliucci suggests that one good strategy in seeking to disabuse science deniers of their misconceptions is to uncover the rhetorical tactics in their discourse. I agree entirely and have written an article in SI advocating the same (“The Rhetoric of Extraordinary Claim,” September/October 2014). However, when Pigliucci then goes on to write, in regard to rhetorical analysis, “It’s not rocket science, folks!,” I must object.

The field of rhetorical studies has a history and tradition as deep and rich as that of most sciences, and while rhetorical analysis may not be as technical as that associated with most scientific fields, it may be just as sophisticated and insightful. I agree that one does not need a PhD in rhetoric to return the volleys of science deniers, but by the same token one does not need a PhD in planetary geology to successfully engage a flat-earther.

I hope we can all respect the many areas of study that may inform and advance skepticism and critical thinking.

Peter Marston
Professor of Communication Studies
California State University, Northridge

Massimo Pigliucci replies to Marston:

Definitely my bad. I certainly didn’t mean to insult the field of rhetoric, of which I am a big supporter. Cicero is my favorite ancient writer!

Don’t Look Up!

Thanks to Mark Boslough for his discussion of the poor portrayals of scientists and scientific research in popular films (“Hollywood Finally Listened to Scientists,” review of Don’t Look Up, March/April 2022). I agree with his assessment of the character of Ellie Arroway in Carl Sagan’s Contact as the gold standard for science in Hollywood, but he over-praises the portrayal of scientists in Don’t Look Up. While they do indeed talk like real scientists, they don’t act that way. Of the three scientist leads, only the NASA Planetary Protection Officer manages to stay focused on the predicted comet impact. For much better movie portrayals, I recommend the USGS geoscientists in Supervolcano and the CDC and WHO public health scientists in Contagion, who walk-the-walk as well as talk-the-talk. I much prefer to see scientists in films who inspire our admiration.

David Morrison
San Jose, California

In “Hollywood Finally Listened to Scientists,” Mark Boslough praises the portrayals of astronomers and links the movie’s theme of disaster from an incoming comet to the current global-warming crisis. But the current crisis is a gradual one, akin to the proverbial frog not noticing that it is being boiled alive, while the comet impact would be abrupt and take place in only a few months—so it is a very different type of worry.

Further, if you stay after the final credits, there is another scene of a shipload of survivors landing on a different planet in the distant future. So, humanity is not extinguished after all. (I wonder what small percentage, like me, always waits to the very end after film credits.)

Jay M. Pasachoff
Professor of Astronomy
Williams College
Amherst, Massachusetts

The motion picture Don’t Look Up may feature “the best movie portrayals of scientists since Jodie Foster in Contact” (From the Editor, SI March/April 2022)?

Really? The typical male scientist is an overweight adulterer easily corrupted by money and fame? (Okay, not too implausible.) The typical female scientist is a hysteric who totally discredits herself by having a meltdown every time she is given a public forum? (I don’t think so.)

In this sloppily written but often amusing film, when she has her first meltdown, there is no justification for it in the story up to that point. The character is acting as if she has read the screenplay and already knows how it will come out.

It’s also something of a period piece. The film’s image of a New Age billionaire seems to be based on the late Steve Jobs. In 2022, our image of a billionaire is a hardheaded technologist who builds rockets that actually work. One cannot imagine a Jeff Bezos or an Elon Musk getting involved in such a pathetic fiasco as the billionaire in the film.

Curiously, the film’s bottom line seems to be that if we can’t trust science or politics, at least we still have the solace of religion. I’m not sure that’s how I would spend my last minutes on Earth!

Taras Wolansky
Kerhonkson, New York

 

 

No Murder?

After reading Joe Nickell’s column “Murder at Mile End” (March/April 2022), I’d like to suggest an alternative solution to the crime.

My solution is that there was no crime. The lady was climbing the shelves of her closet to reach wallpaper on an upper shelf. The shelves tilted under her weight and threw her into the wall, making her hit her head. Her feet made the mark on the opposite wall. This explains all the rolls of wallpaper found around her body and the fact that nothing was missing. It also explains why her skirt was under her head and her front skirts were on her thighs: they flew there as she fell.

Gail Ludwig
Chesterton, Indiana

Joe Nickell replies:

Who says skeptics have no sense of humor? Why, Ms. Ludwig has invented a new genre: a “nonedunnit.” 

            But just in case she is serious, her confirmation bias yields omissions: for example, the bloody foot imprint on the landing, the bloody finger marks on the victim’s dress, and much, much more.

            Having attended several detective schools, I believe mysteries should actually be solved. But then, humor has its own rules.

Sensing Mindfulness

In his column about meditation apps (“Hooked on Mindfulness,” March/April 2022), Matthew Nisbet made a passing comment about “just four electroencephalography sensors” not being the same as the forty of a laboratory EEG. As an anesthesiologist (“anaesthetist” in the United Kingdom), part of my armamentarium of patient monitors are processed EEG monitors. These so-called “depth of anesthesia” monitors, when used to titrate general anesthesia or sedation, help avoid excessive hypnosis and cardiovascular side effects. This improves patient safety and recovery profiles.

I often joke with my patients—while applying the “just” four electrodes on their foreheads before induction of their reversible state of unconsciousness—that they are getting a free facial spa treatment as I scrub them with an abrasive paste. A typical EEG has a voltage < 100 microvolts, significantly less than the 2–3 millivolts of an electrocardiogram (ECG). For a reliable EEG signal, it is necessary to obtain electrode impedances < 5 kΩ on the three measuring leads and the reference lead. While I know nothing about “meditation headbands,” I do know that in clinical medicine the quality of signals often matters more than the quantity of electrodes. Sometimes less is enough.

Dr. Pnt Laloë
Huddersfield, United Kingdom

Bigfoot Bears

I took great pleasure reading Joe Nickell’s column pointing out that the geographical distribution of bigfoot sightings corresponds to that of bear populations throughout North America (January/February 2022). While reading his comparison of the anatomy of bears to that of their mythical counterparts, I couldn’t help but recall my grandfather’s comment regarding hunting ursids. Having worked most of his adult life in the logging industry in Northern Ontario, he was also quite fond of fish and game. As it happens, my hometown of Chapleau is sometimes nicknamed the black bear capital of the province. One day, as my grandfather was recollecting stories of his numerous moose hunting expeditions, I asked him if he had ever hunted bear. “Once,” he told me. “But never again. When I took the pelt off that bear, I was struck by how human the body underneath looked. Creeped the hell out of me.” I feel his anatomical observation only adds more weight to Nickell’s comparison. On a final note, my grandfather refused to eat rabbit for the same reason: he felt that once skinned, they looked too much like tiny humans! Any hares out there being mistaken for tiny sasquatches?

Dr. Joseph Gagné
Historian and Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Windsor
Windsor, Ontario